Dominion (6 page)

Sarah shook herself, took off her coat, and switched on the central heating. She lit the coal fire, then went into the kitchen and turned on the radio, cheerful dance music on
the Light Programme breaking the silence. She began to prepare dinner. Despite what she had said to Irene, she knew she couldn’t face it, she couldn’t confront David yet.

D
AVID HAD ALSO TRAVELLED INTO
London that Sunday afternoon, the key and the camera taken out of their locked drawer and slipped into his inside jacket
pocket next to his ID card. Two years as a spy had strengthened him, hardened him, even though, tangled in all the lies, part of him felt totally at sea.

There were not many others travelling, a few shift workers and people going in to meet friends. David wore a sports jacket and flannel trousers under his coat; if staff came in to work at the
Office at the weekend they were allowed to dress informally.

Opposite him a woman sat reading
The Times
. It had been bought by Beaverbrook to add to his newspaper empire just before he took the premiership; he owned almost half the country’s
newspapers now, and Lord Rothermere’s
Daily Mail
stable had swallowed up a large chunk of the rest. ‘
What Now for America?
’ a headline asked, above a picture of the
newly elected Adlai Stevenson, his face serious and scholarly. ‘
For twelve years, America has minded its own business under Republican presidents. Will Stevenson, like Roosevelt, be
tempted to naive interference in European affairs?
’ They’ll be worried, David thought with satisfaction. Nothing was going right for them now. Another article speculated that the
Queen’s Coronation next year might be in some way combined with celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of Herr Hitler’s accession to power in Germany, where huge celebrations were
planned, greater even than the Italian festivities earlier in the year to mark Mussolini’s thirty years in power.

He arrived at Westminster and turned into Whitehall. It was a raw, chilly afternoon. The few people about walked along in their drab clothes, huddled into themselves. David had
watched, for over ten years, people growing slowly shabbier, looking more alone. A poster from last year’s Festival of Empire at Greenwich hung, soot-smeared, on a hoarding; a young couple
helping a child feed a calf against a background of hills.
‘A Prosperous New Life in Africa.’

The Dominions Office was on the corner of Downing Street. David could see the policeman standing outside Number 10. Nearby the pile of wreaths at the foot of the Cenotaph was looking sad and
tatty now. He walked up the office steps. There was a frieze above the doors showing a panorama of Empire: Africans with spears, turbaned Indians and Victorian statesmen all jumbled together, black
with London grime. Inside, the wide vestibule was empty. Sykes, the porter, nodded to him. He was elderly, but sharp-eyed.

‘Afternoon, Mr Fitzgerald. Working Sunday again, sir?’

‘Yes. Duty calls, I’m afraid. Anyone else in?’

‘The Permanent Secretary, up on the top floor. Nobody else. People sometimes come in to work on Saturday, but seldom on Sundays.’ He smiled at David. ‘I remember, sir, when I
started here. Assistant Secretaries often didn’t come in till eleven. Nobody here at weekends except the Resident clerks.’ He shook his head.

‘The trials of Empire,’ David said, returning the smile. He signed the day book. Sykes reached back to the row of numbered keys on the board behind him, and handed David the one to
his office, on its metal tag. David walked to the lift. It was ancient and sometimes marooned people between floors. He wondered if one day the hundred-year-old cables might break, sending everyone
inside to perdition. Creaking, it rose slowly to the second floor. He pulled aside the heavy gates and got out. In front of him was the Registry, where during the week clerks endlessly checked
files in and out from behind a long counter, the clacking of typewriters audible beyond the door of the typing pool. At the far end of the counter Carol’s desk stood empty, in front of a door
with its smoked glass panels marked
Authorized Personnel Only.
David looked at it for a second, then turned and walked down the long narrow passage. It was strange how footsteps echoed in
here when you were alone.

His office was half of a big Victorian room, an elegant cornice cut off by a partition. He saw, in the centre of his desk, the fat High Commissioners’ Meetings file, the draft agenda he
had prepared for Hubbold pinned to the front with a note in his superior’s tiny scrawl.
We spoke
.
Let us discuss further, on Monday.

David took off his coat, then retrieved the tiny silver camera from his pocket. It was, ironically, German, a Leica; not much bigger than a Swan Vestas matchbox, you could photograph dozens of
documents just by the light of a lamp. The camera had seemed an extraordinary thing when he was first given it, like something out of a science-fiction story, but he was used to it now. He lit a
cigarette to steady himself.

After that first meeting on Hampstead Heath, the next time David saw Geoff at the tennis club he had asked, ‘That man Jackson, he’s in the Civil Service,
isn’t he?’

A spasm had crossed Geoff’s face, annoyance and guilt mixed together. ‘I can’t answer that, old boy; you have to realize, I can’t.’

‘Jackson knew a lot about me. Is he interested in me for some particular reason?’

‘I can’t tell you. You have to decide first whether you’re willing to support us.’

‘I do support you. You mean, am I willing to
do
things for you?’

‘
With
us. Things are hotting up, now we’re illegal.’ Geoff gave his quick sardonic smile. ‘You may have noticed.’

David had heard the radio broadcasts saying the British Resistance was a treasonous organization, the public under a duty to report its activities. He had seen the new posters, a picture of
Churchill when he was a minister during the 1939–40 war, dressed in a dark suit and Homburg and holding a machine gun, the caption underneath, ‘
Wanted Dead or Alive
’. He
moved closer to Geoff and asked quietly, ‘The news reports about illegal strikers carrying guns, about that armoured police car being blown up in Glasgow, are they true?’

‘They rigged the election,’ Geoff said heavily. ‘And they declared war on us. You know what war is.’

‘I’ve never been a pacifist like Sarah.’ David shook his head. ‘But if I worked with you I’d be putting everything on the line. My whole life. My wife’s
life.’

‘Not if she didn’t know.’ There was a long silence. ‘It’s all right, David,’ Geoff said. ‘You’ve got responsibilities, I know.’

‘I hate it all,’ he said quietly.

Geoff looked at him. ‘Would you like to see Jackson again?’

David took a long, long breath. ‘Yes,’ he said finally.

It was several meetings later, towards the end of 1950, that Jackson told David he wanted him to be the Resistance spy in the Dominions Office. The two of them were in a
private room in an exclusive Westminster club.

‘We need information, intelligence on what the government’s thinking and doing. Not just in home policy, but foreign and Imperial policy, too. After all, the core agreement of the
1940 Treaty was that Hitler took Europe and we kept the Empire. And developed it, too, to an extent we hadn’t bothered about before, to make up for the loss of markets in Europe.’ He
smiled sadly. ‘The retreat into Empire. The old dream of the political right, Beaverbrook’s dream.’

‘But we’ve made the Empire hate us.’

‘Yes, we have, haven’t we?’ That sad smile again. Then Jackson gave David one of his long, slow looks. ‘The Resistance have people in the India Office and the Colonial
Office. There have been three famines in Bengal since 1942, for example, that we’ve never been told about. We need someone who can tell us how it’s going with the Dominions. The White
Empire. We know Canada and Australia and New Zealand aren’t happy with political developments here, though the South Africans don’t mind. We want to know how the big African settlement
programmes are going, the plans for the new East African and Rhodesian Dominions. You could supply us with that information, papers too. You’d meet periodically with me, our man from the
India Office, and our Colonial Office fellow.’

‘Geoff’s the Colonial Office man, isn’t he?’ David said.
And you’re from the Foreign Office
, he thought. Jackson didn’t answer.

‘I’m too junior to be allowed to take papers from the office.’

Jackson nodded his big grey head and smiled in that way he had, half confidential, half condescending. ‘There are ways.’

‘What ways?’ David asked. Looking back, he realized that was the moment when he had made the final, irrevocable commitment.

Jackson said, ‘So you’re joining us?’

David hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes.’

Jackson smiled, a smile of real warmth. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He shook David’s hand firmly.

And so, bit by bit, David learned how the Resistance had people everywhere, in factories, offices, the countryside, organizing protests and poster campaigns, strikes and demonstrations. There
were even small areas, mining villages and remote country districts, where they were in charge, where the police dared not venture except in force. Passive resistance was over; the police and army
and their buildings were all legitimate targets. They had links with other Resistance groups throughout the continent. And they had spies everywhere, ‘sleepers’ working in institutions
all over the country, awaiting the call.

Shortly after, when they met in the club again, Jackson said, ‘Time to introduce you to the Soho flat.’

‘Why Soho?’

‘Soho’s a good place to meet, full of all sorts.’ He smiled. ‘If we bump into someone from the Service in the streets, he’ll think we’re on the same business
as he is, and he’s hardly going to talk about it, now is he?’

David visited the flat for the first time the following week, one evening after work. It felt strange, getting off the tube at Piccadilly Circus and walking into Soho. The
address he had been given was in a narrow alley, a door with peeling paint beside an Italian coffee shop. Inside, two Jive Boys stood beside a jukebox, which was belting out some of the horrible
new American rock ’n’ roll. The papers said the jukebox craze would kill live music, that they should be banned. David knocked. He heard footsteps descending stairs and the door opened.
A dark-haired woman stood there; even in the dim light from within David saw she was attractive. She wore a shapeless smock covered in splashes of paint. She gave him a direct look from green,
slightly Oriental eyes, and said, ‘Come up,’ brusquely. She had a faint accent that he couldn’t place.

He followed her up a narrow staircase, smelling of damp and old vegetables, into a studio flat, a big single room with pictures stacked against the wall and on easels, a narrow bed and tiny
kitchen at one end. The pictures were oils, well done. Some were urban scenery, narrow streets and baroque churches, others snow-covered landscapes with mountains in the distance. In one, figures
were lying on the snow, covered with red splashes; blood, David realized. At once he was reminded of Norway, German planes strafing the column of British soldiers stumbling terrified through the
snow.

Geoff and Jackson were sitting on either side of an electric fire. Geoff smiled awkwardly. The woman spoke first. ‘Welcome, Mr Fitzgerald. I am Natalia.’ Her smile was pleasant but
somehow closed. In the light she looked a little older than he had thought, in her mid-thirties perhaps, tiny crow’s feet beside those eyes, slightly narrowed and upturned at the corners. She
had long, straight brown hair and a wide mouth above a pointed chin.

‘This is where we will meet, our little Imperial group.’ Jackson looked at Natalia with a respect that surprised David. ‘Natalia is to be trusted absolutely,’ he said.
‘When I’m not here, she is in charge. We meet together, and never with anyone else, apart from our India Office man’

‘I understand.’

‘So.’ Jackson put his hands on his knees. ‘Tea, everyone? Natalia, would you mind doing the honours?’

The first thing they discussed, that night at the end of 1950, was how David could gain access to the room in which the confidential department files were kept. David could think of no way to
get in there, as the only people with keys were the Registrar, Dabb, and the woman in charge of the secret files room, Miss Bennett, and both had to hand their keys in to the porter whenever they
left the building.

‘We don’t need the key,’ Jackson said briskly, ‘just the number on the tag. You know there’s a number stamped on all of them, four digits, so that if a key gets
lost they can match the numbering with their records at the Department of Works.’

‘All Civil Service filing cabinets, and the keys, are made by Works Department locksmiths,’ Geoff explained. ‘When the ’48 rules came in forbidding Jews from working in
the Civil Service all Jewish employees had to leave. For security reasons.’

‘Yes.’ David remembered lying awake at night beside his sleeping wife as Parliament passed yet another anti-Jew law, fists clenched, eyes wide.

Jackson said, ‘One of the locksmiths was an old Jew who was kicked out then. He’s come over to us, and brought the specifications for all the keys with him. All you need is the
number on the key to the secret room and he can make a copy.’ He smiled. ‘These stupid Jew laws actually help us sometimes.’

‘But how do I get it?’ David asked.

Jackson exchanged a look with Geoff. ‘Tell me about Miss Bennett.’

‘She’s one of the 1939–40 intake, when they allowed women into the administrative grades because of the war.’

Jackson nodded. ‘I often think those women who stayed after the Treaty must feel very out of place. Unmarried, of course, or they would’ve had to leave. What’s Miss Bennett
like?’

David hesitated. ‘A nice woman. Bored, I think, wasted in that job.’ He thought of Carol, her desk behind the counter with the buff files with red crosses marked ‘Top
Secret’, a cigarette usually burning in her ashtray.